Layoffs are an inevitable feature of corporate life, thanks to globalization, technology, changing business fundamentals, corporate scandals, misconceived business plans, greedy executives, Wall Street profiteers and (write your favorite reason here).
The trick is to avoid ending up on the corporate layoff list, which may be unofficially conceived long before cuts are even anticipated.
“Layoffs provide a wonderful opportunity to clean house,” said former human- resources executive Cynthia Shapiro. “If (managers) plan it correctly, they can get rid of all their troublemakers.”
Have you openly criticized your boss? Disparaged the company on a blog? Gossiped about office politics? Filed a workers’ compensation claim or sexual-harassment complaint? Requested medical or maternity leave? Used all of your sick days? Sought personal bankruptcy protection? Suffered a messy divorce? Been a general nuisance around the office?
“They will put you at the top of the layoff list,” claims Shapiro, based in Los Angeles. “They will just remove you – problem solved.”
Axes, after all, aren’t just for Christmas trees. Thousands of American jobs will be cut as the holiday season approaches. General Motors is slashing 30,000 jobs; Delta Airlines, 9,000; Merck, 7,000; America Online, 700.
In Colorado, recent job-cut announcements include Cenveo, which is closing a printing plant and shedding 128 jobs. Also, used-car lender Centrix Financial has cut 250 people since September.
Shapiro, 38, of Los Angeles used to do HR work for a private company. She also has done HR consulting work for several Fortune 500 companies.
She said she went into the HR field in the 1980s, hoping to help people. She thought HR would be like running an “employee concierge.” But over time, it became something else. “HR is not there to help you,” Shapiro said. “They are there to protect the company from you.”
Things you may tell an HR person in confidence – like your need for help with a drug or alcohol problem – may be used against you come layoff season, Shapiro claims. She’s written a book, “Corporate Confidential: 50 Secrets Your Company Doesn’t Want You to Know – And What to Do About Them,” published in September. She says it’s part of her penance. She also said she’s no longer doing lucrative Fortune 500 consulting gigs. Instead, she’s busy with less-certain, lower-paying counseling sessions with individual workers needing help.
Shapiro wants people to consider that who gets laid off is often up to individual managers. And whom do managers choose? The folks who compete to see who agrees with them more? Or the brazen naysayers and gossips?
“There is underground retaliation going on every day,” she said. “Yes, this is illegal, and yes, companies do it anyway. … And people are never told the real reasons about why they were let go.”
As an HR executive, she said she loathed seeing people lose their jobs, never being able to tell them why they ended up on the layoff list.
“It was like being witness to an accident over and over again,” she said, “but not ever being able to say anything.”
Shapiro said she often wished she could simply tell employees the truth: that there is no free-speech guarantee at work, and if you are perceived as causing trouble for the boss, the boss will often cause trouble for you.
Many companies in the throes of laying off workers would take issue, and perhaps even offense, at Shapiro’s claims.
The 250 layoffs at Centrix Financial, a Centennial-based provider of “subprime” auto loans, for example, were not based on any such schemes, spokeswoman Lauren Sides said.
I called Sides after speaking with a laid-off Centrix employee who had taken medical leave. Just a coincidence, said Sides. With 250 people, odds are there were some folks who fell ill.
“It was based on seniority across the board,” Sides said of the two recent rounds of layoffs. “That was difficult. We lost some very good performers with that criteria, but we thought, overall, in a difficult situation, that would be the most fair way to do that.”
Al Lewis’ column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Friday. Respond to Lewis at , 303-820-1967, or alewis@denverpost.com.
